I Hear Voices

by Gail Koger

  my husband added.

  “Neat plan and it explains all the dead bodies you left littering the countryside.”

  “That it does.”

  “Since you don’t need my services, ma’am, I’ll let you get dressed,” Hank said and closed the door behind him.

  “Alone at last,” I said and dropped my towel.

  Fabian pounded on the door, “I have your sub, bella.”

  Crap. That was quick. “Okay, thanks, I’ll be right out.”

  Lights flashing and siren wailing, a patrol car skidded to a stop in front of the Airstream. The Sheriff bolted from the car with a gun in one hand and looked around wildly. I let the curtains drop and turned an accusing gaze on my husband. “You just had to sic Granny on him.”

  He gave me an unrepentant grin. “I needed some time with my wife.”

  An answering grin pulled at my mouth. “We do have to keep Mister Happy satisfied.”

  “That we do.”

  The Sheriff screamed, “Stay away from me!

  Stay away from me!”

  Rolling my eyes, I grabbed Excalibur and headed for the door. “You get to calm that poor guy down, sugar.”

  Derek saluted me sharply. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I couldn’t wait to see my husband’s face when he finally saw Granny in her big, scary monster form. I hurried down the steps and took a quick look.

  Granny Annabel had taken on Asmoday’s true form. An enormous horned serpent with glittering red scales and a mouth full of awesome fangs.

  Grinning, I watched Derek and Ed come to a complete stop and stare in utter disbelief.

  Welcome to my world.

  A hand on his blessed cross, Derek dropped the screaming Sheriff with a quick blow to the neck.

  The air rippled around Asmoday and an instant later my grandmother stood there with an amused smile on her face. “This is so much fun.”

  Ed sputtered in disbelief, “Fun?”

  “Granny’s got a mean streak.”

  With an indignant huff, Granny Annabel vanished.

  Hank peered cautiously around the Hummer.

  “Is it safe to come out?”

  “Yes, Granny won’t hurt you.”

  Ed glanced around warily. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes. She just loves scaring the living bejeesus out of people.”

  Fabian sauntered up. “Was she doing Asmoday again?”

  “Yep.”

  Derek wrapped a protective arm around me.

  “That’s what Asmoday looks like?”

  “Pretty scary, huh?”

  “Geezus. He’s the size of a house,” Hank added.

  “Sending the demon king back to the Ninth Hell won’t be easy.” I pointed Excalibur at the skeletal remains of the Aztec warriors. “Dominus unus morsellus vindolan.”

  Blue flames danced over the bones and they crumbled to dust.

  Turning to my husband, I asked, “Now what are we going to do with the Sheriff?”

  “We give him the antidote,” Derek answered.

  “We have a mystical antidote?”

  Hank grinned and held up a vial. “One shot and they’re as good as new.”

  I took the vial. “It’s B.”

  “Yes, ma’am, and it works like magic.” Hank bent down and injected the sheriff as he began to regain consciousness.

  “Do I get a Homeland Security badge, too?”

  “You get anything you want, Angel,” Derek answered, his eyes full of love.

  “Cool. I want the biggest box of Godiva chocolate you can find.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Fates must be laughing their asses off. The gold and turquoise statue of the Aztec moon goddess Coyotxauhqui led us right back to the Superstition Mountains. Go figure.

  Now I got to add the Thunder God to my list of things to kill. Did the powers to be really think I didn’t have enough to do? I mean, c’mon, give me a fucking break. There was no way I could kill two demons at the same time.

  I glared at Derek in the driver’s seat. “Where’s my chocolate?”

  He patted my leg absently. “It’s coming.”

  “By Carrier pigeon?” I closed my eyes and sighed. God, was I such a cranky butt.

  Derek wrapped a big hand around my neck.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  Was it? The thought of facing Asmoday again gave me the willies. If I didn’t get some chocolate soon, I was going to have a meltdown of biblical proportions.

  The rising sun spilled over the jagged edge of the mountains revealing the trash covered parking lot of the Lost Dutchman’s Park. A semi-truck and Black Hawk helicopter waited for us.

  Derek brought the Hummer to a stop by the semi.

  I looked around the nearly empty lot. “What happened to my Sonata?”

  “It’s in the impound lot,” my husband answered.

  “Gee bailing it out is gonna cost you.”

  “What makes you think I’m paying for it?”

  “It’s what husbands do, snookums.”

  Hank chortled, “Snookums?”

  “Shut it,” Derek commanded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll get your car out of impound if you stop with the snookums crap.”

  “Deal,” I said, grinning.

  My husband pointed to a picnic table. “I want you to sit there and stay out of trouble.”

  Fabian laughed. “That’s not possible.”

  I gave him the one fingered salute.

  “Angel,” Derek growled in warning. “Behave yourself and go sit down.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “No chocolate.”

  Shit! That was just mean. I gave him a sharp salute. “Yes, sir.”

  Derek swatted my butt as I sashayed off.

  “Brat.”

  Perched on the table, I watched Derek, Ed, Hank and Fabian carry our special Vatican delivery of holy water grenades, blessed weapons, silver and salt bullets to the helicopter. We were going in loaded for big bad demons. Didn’t that sound like fun?

  A FedEx van pulled to a stop and the driver hurried over with a large gold wrapped box.

  Derek signed for it and brought me my special delivery. “The biggest box of Godiva chocolate money can buy, Angel.”

  About fucking time. I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him. “It’s a truly wonderful wedding gift, sugar.”

  “Only the best for you, my love.”

  My jaw dropped. Derek had said the L word.

  A hint of nervousness in his gaze, my husband said, “You stole my heart when…”

  “Boss, we’ve got a problem,” Hank called from inside the semi.

  Letting out a frustrated sigh, Derek yelled, “I’ll be right there.”

  “We can talk later,” I reassured him.

  “Wouldn’t bet on it.” Dropping a hard kiss on my mouth, he stalked over to the semi-truck.

  “What’s so fucking important?”

  “This,” Hank replied and Derek climbed into the truck.

  Hopping back on the table, I tore the pretty gold wrapping off and opened the box of chocolate.

  I let my eyes wander over the contents.

  Decisions.

  Decisions.

  I grabbed my favorite roasted almond truffle and took a bite. My eyes rolled back in my head.

  Omigod, orgasm by chocolate.

  “I need to find a woman like you,” Fabian groused, throwing his backpack in the helicopter.

  “Short and fat?”

  Derek walked back and dropped a kiss on my head. “You’re not fat. You’re curvy.”

  “Aw, you’re so sweet.”

  “It is as I said. You are easily pleased,” Fabian said.

  “So?”

  My cousin plopped down next to me. “The women I date all want champagne, caviar and diamonds. You are happy with a bullet-proof vest and chocolate.”

  “I like chocolate and people keep shooting at me.”

  �
��You need to stop dating super models,” Derek added, plucking a chocolate from the box.

  “I like beautiful women.”

  “You like the Barbie doll type who wears a size zero and has breast implants bigger than her IQ,” I corrected.

  Fabian thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “I will endeavor to find an ugly woman.”

  “You do that.” I turned my attention to Derek.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “A safe and no combination.”

  “Not a problem,” Fabian and I said in unison.

  Color me freaked out. The safe contained an ancient manuscript and a vial of Lucifer’s blood.

  The holy document gave us step by step instructions on how to close an entrance to the

  underworld. The Apaches did call the Superstition Mountains the Devil’s playground. But, damn, an entrance to the nine hells?

  “In exchange for the holy weapons Aldo had to promise the Pope we would close the entrance,”

  Granny Annabel disembodied voice advised.

  “We live to serve the Vatican,” I grumbled.

  “What I want to know is how in the hell did they get a vial of Lucifer’s blood?”

  Fabian shuddered. “No, you do not.”

  “I have to agree with him,” Ed said.

  “Better not to know,” Hank added.

  “Let’s get a move on it, we’re wasting daylight,” Derek ordered and we all trooped over to the helicopter.

  The morning sun cast a golden glow over the one thousand foot column of volcanic rock called Weaver’s Needle. The needle’s shadow would supposedly lead you right to the Lost Dutchman’s gold. What a bunch of hooey. The majority of the idiots who searched for the mine usually ended up dead or mad as a Hatter.

  The hunt for the gold started way back in when Conquistador Francisco Coronado tramped across the southwest for four years searching for the fabled seven cities of gold, Cibola. What he and the other treasure hunters didn’t realize was there were no seven cities of gold. There were seven caverns of gold.

  Aztlan, the Aztec’s legendry homeland, was located beneath the mountains in these caverns.

  All I had to do was find the entrance.

  The Black Hawk hovered alongside Weaver’s Needle.

  “Ready to do your woo-woo stuff?” Derek asked over the headphones.

  “You betcha.” Spreading the map across my lap, I opened my psychic eye and reached out. An icy devouring cold touched me and nightmare images of the people being slaughtered whirled through my brain. There. The entrance to the lost cities was at Painted Rock and only a short ten minute flight away.

  Could the Black Hawk land there? Of course not, so the men rappelled down and I got to ride in that swell basket again.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I crawled into the basket of death and shrieked loudly as it began twirling madly in mid-air.

  The guys laughed so hard I was sure they would pee their pants. Treasure hunting was so much fun.

  “You can open your eyes now, Angel, you’re on the ground.”

  “Then why is everything still spinning?”

  Derek pried my fingers off the basket and lifted me out. “I could always teach you how to rappel.”

  I smacked his chest. “Like hell you will.”

  Laughter laced his voice, “Then you’re stuck with the basket.”

  “You’re a sarcastic beast.”

  My husband held out my box of chocolates.

  “Am I?”

  Okay, maybe not. Giving him a quick kiss, I grabbed the box and sat on a convenient rock and started chowing down.

  The cactus spiked hills sweltered under the unforgiving sun. What little breeze there was felt like it came straight from hell. I wiped at the sweat slithering down my face and neck.

  Twenty minutes later, all the supplies were on the ground and I had eaten my way through most of the chocolate.

  Derek raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You ate the entire box?”

  “They were melting,” I answered, feeling a tiny bit guilty at the lie. I had stuffed the remaining candy in the pockets of my Dockers. Hey, if I was going to face Asmoday again, I needed chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate. Melted or not.

  He handed me my backpack. “Lead the way.”

  Shimmering mirages danced across the rocks as we hiked along the mountain top.

  Unease crawled up my spine. “You sense anything, Granny?”

  “Something awaits us,” her disembodied voice replied.

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  Derek scanned the area. “Hostiles?”

  I nodded. “It’s either the Thunder God or Asmoday. Everyone locked and loaded?”

  “Yes ma’am,” they answered in unison.

  Painted Rock turned out to be a large horseshoe shaped sandstone ridge covered with petroglyphs. One upraised section was stained with ancient blood. The screams of the men and women the Aztecs had sacrificed on this altar echoed through my mind. A shudder shook me. Their tortured souls were still trapped here.

  My husband wrapped a comforting arm around me. “You okay?”

  “I will be after I free all these souls.”

  Fabian handed me Excalibur.

  Since the sword was almost as tall as me and weighed about a ton, my muscle-bound cousin got to carry it. Okay, I played the girl card. Sue me.

  I pointed it at the altar. “Dominus unus morsellus vindolan.”

  Hundreds of glowing blue orbs streamed from the rock, whizzed around us joyfully and vanished into the sky.

  The men stared in open-mouthed astonishment.

  “Pretty awesome, huh?”

  Hank gasped, “Those… Those were their souls?”

  “Yep.”

  Ed added, “How come we can see them this time?”

  Granny Annabel popped in dressed like Annie Okley, complete with guns and cowboy hat. “This is a place of magic.”

  A great crack of thunder shook the ground and a chaotic mass of storm clouds boiled across the sky.

  “Gosh, you think the Thunder God is still pissed at me?”

  A jagged fork of lightning struck the altar, sending shards of rocks flying in every direction.

  I jumped about a foot. “I guess that’s a yes.”

  Derek pulled Charlemagne’s sword from the sheath on his back. “We need to find that entrance.”

  An ice cold wind tickled my back. I followed it over to a grotesquely twisted mesquite tree draped with a sickly yellow fungus “It’s here along with a nasty little booby trap.”

  Fabian reached out a curious finger and I smacked it. “You touch that fungus and you’re dead within an hour. Anyone have a lighter?”

  My hair suddenly stood straight up from my head and acting on instinct, I raised Excalibur in the nick of time. A bolt of lightning ricocheted off the sword and bam! The mesquite tree burst into flames. “Never mind.”

  Slashes of incandescent green flashed angrily across the darkened sky.

  “He comes,” Granny warned.

  The rotting corpse of the Apache warrior lumbered clumsily towards us. A cloud of flies buzzed madly around his head.

  We all took an involuntary step backwards when the stench hit us.

  “Whooeee! I thought he stunk before but wow!

  That’s just nasty.”

  Ed turned an interesting shade of green. “Is it a zombie?”

  “Who cares? Kill it,” Derek commanded and the men unleashed a hail of salt bullets.

  “Tempore. Cuidamn. Monstrata. Desopsuit de cruce,” I shouted over the gunfire.

  With an unearthly wail, the Apache warrior blew up, spewing putrefied flesh in every direction.

  “Oh ick!” My stomach heaved and to my horror, I threw up all my wonderful chocolate.

  Fabian, Ed and Hank quickly followed suit.

  Derek looked at them in disgust and handed me his canteen. “Is it safe to cut the tree down?”

  Rinsing my mouth out, I nodded. “Fir
e kills the fungus.”

  With a few powerful sword strokes, Derek cut the tree down, exposing a bricked-up entrance. “A little C should take care of this.”

  Lightning crackled like fiery snakes across the boiling clouds.

  “Better hurry, sugar, we just slowed him down a bit.”

  Setting the timer, Derek motioned us back.

  I took cover behind a large boulder and thirty seconds later, there was a small boom. A cloud of dust billowed out and pieces of sandstone brick and mortar pelted us.

  I took a quick peek and the breath froze in my lungs. The darkness inside the cavern was like a black thing crawling out to engulf us.

  “Sugar, could you chuck one of those holy water grenades in there?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Derek hurled the grenade.

  BAM! Something inside shrieked in agony.

  The men all looked at me.

  “Nothing to worry about, probably a ghoul or a lower demon they left to guard the place.”

  Hank crossed himself. “Is it dead?”

  “I sure hope so.” Turning my flashlight on, I cautiously checked the narrow tunnel for booby traps.

  Derek growled in my ear, “You hope so?”

  “If it’s a lower level demon, it’s dead, but if it’s not, you might want to have another grenade ready.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I stepped cautiously into the pitch black cavern and the men quickly filed in behind me.

  Granny Annabel chanted, “Carutius fornicem ripam.”

  A torch flared in the darkness, then another and another and another until I could make out a vast cavern.

  “Thanks Granny.” I looked around in awe.

  A huge drawing of Montezuma battling a Conquistador glowed eerily on one massive wall. On the other side of the cavern was an immense sandstone cliff dwelling.

  Dozens of mummified warriors lay crumpled around an arched doorway. The echoes of a long ago battle swirled through my mind and I caught a few fleeting images of their desperate fight to save their families from demons.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God!”

  The men closed rank around me and Derek growled, “What’s wrong?”

  “It was their idiot high priest who opened the doorway to the nine hells.” I cocked my head as another image flashed into my head. “The good news is he was the first one to get eaten.”

  Derek glanced around warily. “And the bad news?”